How I Was a Brazilian Mail Order Bride: a True Story from the Brazilian Girl
I’m from Recife, Pernambuco. My name is Fernanda, I’m 39, and I’m a mother of two and a Brazilian mail order bride. Born in 1984, graduated from the Federal University in 2006, got married the next year, had children in 2012 (twins!), and got divorced 5 years after that.
Yes, you probably heard that Brazilian people are very religious and all that, and it’s 100% true, but my Protestant church is totally ok with divorce — it’s discouraged, yes, but it’s not like the Catholic Church that prohibits divorce. So, anyway, in 2017, when I was 33, we got divorced. Of course, children stayed with me after the divorce, and of course, it was hard — in the financial context, I mean. But emotionally, it was a relief and it felt like a new life for me.
Can’t wait till the end of the post? Take a sneak peek at my notes from my experience of being a mail order bride:
- American men are often seen as better husbands here in Brazil — they are less dramatic and often more intelligent, less aggressive and more respectful, less focused on hypermasculinity and more interested in making a woman happy. They are just better, that’s what I think, and I’m not alone.
- LatiDate is your #1 choice if you’re looking for a Brazilian girl for marriage. I tried 6 “best” websites with a lot of good reviews, but only this one worked for me. You don’t have to repeat my mistakes and waste your time.
- There’s a lot of red flags when it comes to online dating websites, as I realized. Free websites I used before got all these flags and even more — fake profiles, scammers, empty profiles, low response rate, and so on. I knew about it but I thought this was normal on dating sites.
- You have to understand that your Brazilian wife will not be fun, optimistic, and extremely friendly 24/7. We are all human beings, we are as unique as you, and saying that we all are like this or like that is just wrong, not to mention it may be offensive to some.
That’s when I started my new life, and that’s when I started meeting foreign men. 2 years after that, I met Ethan — he lived in New York, worked as a highschool teacher, and was going through divorce.
Now, it’s 2023, I live in NYC with Ethan, the best man in the world, and everything is just great. But it certainly wasn’t so great a few years ago!
How did I get there?
My story isn’t too interesting, I’m afraid. I finished university in 2006 when I was 22, then I took my time, enjoyed football — there was a World Cup in 2006 and you know, in my country, it’s always a party with people dancing on the streets, hugging, and singing. Even if our national team loses too early, like that year.
During one of these street parties, I met my first husband… Don’t even want to say his name here, really — for a few years, I thought this man had ruined my life.
It turned out that it’s not that easy to ruin the life of a Brazilian woman. We are just too cheerful and optimistic to be broken by something like that, and I have my twins, Joao and Maria Antonia, so I was responsible for their lives, too. I just couldn’t afford to break down.
That’s when I thought that I was done with dating Brazilian men, and that’s why I started chatting with Americans. I learned English in high school and in the university, read a lot of books, and watched American YouTube channels, so I could hold a conversation in English, at least on a basic level.
Why not local guys?
First, don’t get me wrong: Brazilian men are charming and romantic. They know how to date a woman and they know how to impress her. What they don’t know is how to be loyal, respectful, and caring. They just don’t know how to make it work in the long term. They are super sexist, they are not loyal at all (and extremely jealous at the same time!), they are abusive and they can even lay hands on a wife. It’s all about that machismo, hyper-masculinity, and bravado. Yes, not all of them are 100% overconfident and unfaithful, but to some degree… The situation is changing slowly and young Brazilian men are generally more respectful and caring, as far as I know from my friends. But I couldn’t marry an 18-year-old boy when I was 33 and had 2 children, it’s just not how it works here.
So that’s why I started thinking about finding an American guy. It’s a common thing here — a lot of local girls get married to an Americano, it’s usually seen as a great success and even a reason for jealousy.
This has always been a thing, actually. However, in the 21st century, this has nothing to do with branqueamento or “whitening”, when Latin Americans wanted to get married to white Americans in order to have lighter skinned children. Today, it’s about personal traits, not about the tone of skin (ironically, my future husband is black).
American men are often seen as better husbands here in Brazil — they are less dramatic and often more intelligent, less aggressive and more respectful, less focused on hypermasculinity and more interested in making a woman happy. They are just better, that’s what I think, and I’m not alone.
There are thousands of women here and each of them would love to become a Brazilian mail order bride.
Why online dating didn’t work for me at first
Latidate is your #1 choice if you’re looking for a Brazilian girl for marriage. I tried 6 “best” websites with a lot of good reviews, but only this one worked for me. You don’t have to repeat my mistakes and waste your time.
This may sound strange, I understand it, but I really want to save everyone reading this from making the same mistakes I made. Why use mediocre dating sites and suffer from poor quality, why waste money when you can start with a great website? But it’s up to you, of course.
The problem with all those sites is that a lot of men who want to find Brazilian wife are, let’s say, strange. It often felt more like a sexual fetish than a genuine desire to find a soul mate, to be honest. Some guys were obviously fake accounts who wanted to, I don’t know, steal my money, probably? Thank God I was poor then! There were some nice people there, of course — we even planned a date with a fun dentist in his 50s, but it didn’t work out. Well, it was for the better, as it turned out.
So, for 2 years, I haven’t had any dates with foreigners I met on dating sites.
This, above, is actually the whole story. I tried 3 free dating sites and 3 paid ones where real men wanted to find a wife “in Colombia or Brazil”, as one guy told me. I don’t even think he knew these are two different countries with different languages, to be honest.
How it finally worked
When 6 dating sites didn’t work for me, I started thinking it was about me. But then, I found a whole new world! Apparently, there were specialized websites where people reviewed dating sites — and the sites I used before had the lowest rankings.
There’s a lot of red flags when it comes to online dating websites, as I realized. Free websites I used before got all these flags and even more — fake profiles, scammers, empty profiles, low response rate, and so on. I knew about it but I thought this was normal on dating sites.
So in 2019, I finally made it to LatiDate. Just 2 weeks after the registration, I met Ethan. I felt chemistry even before we actually met in person — we had a lot to talk about and, well, it wasn’t 100% romantic at first because he was going through a difficult divorce and I had some experience in, you know, divorces, so I wanted to make him feel better.
We talked, exchanged photos and even videos, and everything just happened naturally. 2 months after our first chat, he sent me a photo of his divorce certificate and asked me on a date.
I was very afraid that introducing him to my children would go wrong, but Maria Antonia and Joao were just great. They weren’t fluent English speakers in 2019 (they were only 7 so it’s not surprising), but they somehow bonded after our first dinner.
And in 2020, we got married. That’s the worst year for getting a visa, it took us almost 20 months to get it, but in 2021, we finally met in New York.
Now, we live in Hempstead, and honestly, it’s just great. I have a job, Joao and Mito go to a great school, and I’m so happy I never thought it’d be possible.
Problems I had to face
There was only 1 problem, actually. Well, getting a CR-1 visa was really bad and extremely time-consuming because of the pandemics, but it’s not something I can change. What I can change is the perception of stereotypes.
I read the stories of other girls here and I know 2 women who found husbands through a Brazilian brides agency, and they all say the same thing: they are tired of stereotypes. I can say with certainty that I’m tired of them, as well. I saw a lot of messages with stereotypes, I heard them from American people, and I know that a lot of people still think that a generalization is a great thing.
You have to understand that your Brazilian wife will not be fun, optimistic, and extremely friendly 24/7. We are all human beings, we are as unique as you, and saying that we all are like this or like that is just wrong, not to mention it may be offensive to some.
Before finding a Brazilian wife, you have to realize she will most likely not be overly sexual — yes, we love sex, but we are not robots like some of you guys think. And she will not necessarily have to love loud music and dances — it’s like saying that all Americans are obese, arrogant, and always eat in Waffle House. Some of you do, but if you’re athletic, humble, and prefer salads, these stereotypes will probably sound strange to you, right?
I mean, it’s not even offensive to me, I’m 39, I saw a lot and I’ve been through a lot. I’m pretty “casca-grossa”, a thick-skinned person, so when one guy tells me “You don’t look Brazilian, I thought y’all were black” or another guy says something like “I know you Brazilians don’t like to work so you can stay home and do all the cooking and cleaning”, I just don’t care about it. But imagine a young girl, sensitive and shy — if she was in my shoes, such messages could do a lot of bad things to her.
In fact, that’s one of the reasons why I’m here — to make it easier both for that young girl who wants to become a bride and for that American man who doesn’t know how to tell that girl he’s interested in her.
If you want to know how to get a Brazilian wife or want to learn more about Brazilian and other South American dating cultures, I’m sure I can make your life a little bit easier. There are no magic recipes and magic buttons, and there are no algorithms that would give you 100% chances. But I’m sure I can, for example, write a useful guide or explain the differences between dating in North and South Americas based on personal experience. I don’t know if this is going to be a successful story, but I definitely know that I have a lot of things to share with you.
